The memory of the extraordinary Ligeia pursues a man unable to accept his death. When you try to rebuild your life with another woman, disease, opium and an impossible presence begin to erase the border between duel and supernatural. A dark story about obsessive love, death and the will to overcome it, originally published in 1838.
The will is there lying, but not dead. Who knows the mysteries of will, in all its power? For God is only an immense will dominating all things by virtue of their intensity. Man is not defeated by angels, not even by death completely, but by the weakness of his fragile will. - Jóseph Glánvill. I could not, for my sake, remember how, when, or exactly where I met Lady Ligeia. Many years have passed since then, and my memory has been weakened by suffering. Or perhaps it is impossible for me to remember it now because, in reality, the personality of my beloved, his rare talent, the serene and unique character of his beauty and the penetrating and greedy eloquence of his veiled and musical voice opened way to my heart so quickly and furtively that, without a doubt, those incidents went unnoticed or ignored. I believe, however, that I found it for the first time and more often in some large, old and decadent city near the Rhine. Surely I must have heard of her family; and there is no doubt that she was going back to a very old age. Ligeia! In studies of such a nature that they weaken all the impressions of the outside world, only this sweet word "Ligeia!" has the power to make the image of the one that no longer exists before my eyes, through fantasy. And now, as I write, I have the idea that I never got to know the family name of which my friend and my fiancée was, and became the partner of my studies, and later the chosen wife of my heart. Was that a hollow of my Ligeia? Did he demand, as a proof of the intensity of my affection, that I do not do any research in this regard? Or would it perhaps be a whim of mine, some stranger and rom antic offering on the altar of the most passionate devotion? I hardly have the confused reminiscence of the fact in itself; how can it be marvel that I have completely forgotten the circumstances that caused it? Indeed, if the spirit that is called Romance, if the pale Astophet, of nebula wings, goddess of idolatrous Egypt, ever presided, as they say, over the novelesque marriages, it certainly should have reigned in mine. There is, however, a predilect theme of my heart in which my
